git-receive-pack(1) Manual Page

NAME

SYNOPSIS

git-receive-pack <directory>

DESCRIPTION

Invoked by git send-pack and updates the repository with the
information fed from the remote end.

This command is usually not invoked directly by the end user.
The UI for the protocol is on the git send-pack side, and the
program pair is meant to be used to push updates to remote
repository. For pull operations, see git-fetch-pack(1).

The command allows for creation and fast-forwarding of sha1 refs
(heads/tags) on the remote end (strictly speaking, it is the
local end git-receive-pack runs, but to the user who is sitting at
the send-pack end, it is updating the remote. Confused?)

There are other real-world examples of using update and
post-update hooks found in the Documentation/howto directory.

git-receive-pack honours the receive.denyNonFastForwards config
option, which tells it if updates to a ref should be denied if they
are not fast-forwards.

OPTIONS

<directory>

The repository to sync into.

pre-receive Hook

Before any ref is updated, if $GIT_DIR/hooks/pre-receive file exists
and is executable, it will be invoked once with no parameters. The
standard input of the hook will be one line per ref to be updated:

sha1-old SP sha1-new SP refname LF

The refname value is relative to $GIT_DIR; e.g. for the master
head this is "refs/heads/master". The two sha1 values before
each refname are the object names for the refname before and after
the update. Refs to be created will have sha1-old equal to 0{40},
while refs to be deleted will have sha1-new equal to 0{40}, otherwise
sha1-old and sha1-new should be valid objects in the repository.

This hook is called before any refname is updated and before any
fast-forward checks are performed.

If the pre-receive hook exits with a non-zero exit status no updates
will be performed, and the update, post-receive and post-update
hooks will not be invoked either. This can be useful to quickly
bail out if the update is not to be supported.

update Hook

Before each ref is updated, if $GIT_DIR/hooks/update file exists
and is executable, it is invoked once per ref, with three parameters:

$GIT_DIR/hooks/update refname sha1-old sha1-new

The refname parameter is relative to $GIT_DIR; e.g. for the master
head this is "refs/heads/master". The two sha1 arguments are
the object names for the refname before and after the update.
Note that the hook is called before the refname is updated,
so either sha1-old is 0{40} (meaning there is no such ref yet),
or it should match what is recorded in refname.

The hook should exit with non-zero status if it wants to disallow
updating the named ref. Otherwise it should exit with zero.

Successful execution (a zero exit status) of this hook does not
ensure the ref will actually be updated, it is only a prerequisite.
As such it is not a good idea to send notices (e.g. email) from
this hook. Consider using the post-receive hook instead.

post-receive Hook

After all refs were updated (or attempted to be updated), if any
ref update was successful, and if $GIT_DIR/hooks/post-receive
file exists and is executable, it will be invoked once with no
parameters. The standard input of the hook will be one line
for each successfully updated ref:

sha1-old SP sha1-new SP refname LF

The refname value is relative to $GIT_DIR; e.g. for the master
head this is "refs/heads/master". The two sha1 values before
each refname are the object names for the refname before and after
the update. Refs that were created will have sha1-old equal to
0{40}, while refs that were deleted will have sha1-new equal to
0{40}, otherwise sha1-old and sha1-new should be valid objects in
the repository.

Using this hook, it is easy to generate mails describing the updates
to the repository. This example script sends one mail message per
ref listing the commits pushed to the repository:

The exit code from this hook invocation is ignored, however a
non-zero exit code will generate an error message.

Note that it is possible for refname to not have sha1-new when this
hook runs. This can easily occur if another user modifies the ref
after it was updated by git-receive-pack, but before the hook was able
to evaluate it. It is recommended that hooks rely on sha1-new
rather than the current value of refname.

post-update Hook

After all other processing, if at least one ref was updated, and
if $GIT_DIR/hooks/post-update file exists and is executable, then
post-update will be called with the list of refs that have been updated.
This can be used to implement any repository wide cleanup tasks.

The exit code from this hook invocation is ignored; the only thing
left for git-receive-pack to do at that point is to exit itself
anyway.

This hook can be used, for example, to run git update-server-info
if the repository is packed and is served via a dumb transport.